Jump to content

McCarthyism and antisemitism

Add links
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The role of antisemitism during McCarthyism (also known as the Second Red Scare) has been noted and debated since the 1940s. In particular, the role of antisemitism during the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg has been debated both inside and outside of the Jewish community.The majority of the Hollywood Ten who were imprisoned by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) were Jewish, with some critics alleging antisemitism. Antisemitism among individuals involved with HUAC has also been noted.[1] During McCarthyism and the Rosenberg trial, many Jewish organizations remained silent concerning or agreed with the prosecution of the Rosenbergs or with McCarthyism in general.[2] Although accused of antisemitism, Joseph McCarthy himself accused others of antisemitism for their criticisms of his investigators Roy Cohn and G. David Schine.[3]

About

[edit]

Joseph McCarthy had very little support among American Jews, who were overwhelmingly anti-McCarthy.[4] Many Jewish organizations were critical of McCartyism, including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).[5] However, while sometimes critical of McCarthyism and red-baiting during the 1950s,[5] the ADL expelled Jewish communists from the organization, cooperated with the House Un-American Activities Committee, and supported the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.[6][7][8]

According to Professor Benjamin Balthaser, academics including Ellen Schrecker, Joel Kovel, and James Ziegler have written that antisemitism within McCarthist anti-communism was partly inspired by the 1930s speeches of the right-wing activist Charles Coughlin (Father Coughlin).[9] Balthaser has stated that his own grandparents, Jewish members of the Communist Party, referred to the Second Red Scare as a "pogrom".[10]

Joseph McCarthy

[edit]

In 1953, a group of Jewish organizations issued a statement denouncing Joseph McCarthy for allegedly making false charges of anti-Semitism, after he characterized critics of his investigators Roy Cohn and G. David Schine as antisemitic.[3]

Malmedy massacre trial

[edit]
See also: Malmedy massacre trial

In an incident for which he would be widely criticized, McCarthy lobbied for the commutation of death sentences given to a group of Waffen-SS soldiers convicted of war crimes for carrying out the 1944 Malmedy massacre of American prisoners of war. McCarthy was critical of the convictions because the German soldiers' confessions were allegedly obtained through torture during the interrogations. He argued that the U.S. Army was engaged in a coverup of judicial misconduct, but never presented any evidence to support the accusation.[11] Shortly after this, a 1950 poll of the Senate press corps voted McCarthy "the worst U.S. senator" currently in office.[12] McCarthy biographer Larry Tye has written that antisemitism factored into McCarthy's outspoken views on Malmedy, and noted that McCarthy frequently used anti-Jewish slurs.[13] In this and McCarthy's other characteristics, such as the enthusiastic support he received from antisemitic politicians like Ku Klux Klansman Wesley Swift and his tendency, according to friends, to refer to his copy of Mein Kampf, stating, "That's the way to do it," McCarthy's critics characterize him as driven by antisemitism. It is important, however, to note that Tye notes that it was not, in his opinion, antisemitism alone that led to McCarthy's actions regarding the Malmedy massacre. It was later found that McCarthy had received "evidence" of the false torture claims from Rudolf Aschenauer, a prominent Neo-Nazi agitator who often served as a defense attorney for Nazi war criminals, such as Einsatzgruppen commander Otto Ohlendorf.[14]

House Un-American Activities Committee

[edit]

The journalist Michael Freedland has alleged that HUAC was motivated by antisemitism. Freedland has cited as antisemitic HUAC's disproportionate targeting of American Jews involved in the film industry, as well as implicitly or overtly antisemitic speeches given during HUAC, such as Congressman John Rankin's speech wherein he stated the Jewish birth names of several Hollywood figures, including Danny Kaye, Eddie Cantor, Edward G. Robinson, and Melvyn Douglas.[15]

In 1939, the neo-Nazi activist George Van Horn Moseley testified before HUAC for five hours about a Jewish Communist conspiracy to take control of the US government. Moseley was supported by Donald Shea of the American Gentile League, whose statement was deleted from the public record as the committee found it so objectionable.[16]

Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952

[edit]

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 was debated and passed in the context of Cold War-era fears and suspicions of infiltrating Soviet and communist spies and sympathizers within American institutions and federal government. Anticommunist sentiment associated with the McCarthyism in the United States led restrictionists to push for selective immigration to preserve national security.[17] Senator Pat McCarran (D-Nevada), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, proposed an immigration bill to maintain the status quo in the United States and to safeguard the country from Communism, "Jewish interests", and undesirables that he deemed as external threats to national security. His immigration bill included restrictive measures such as increased review of potential immigrants, stepped-up deportation, and more stringent naturalization procedures. The bill also placed a preference on economic potential, special skills, and education.[18]

McCarran's legacy has often been characterized as marked by antisemitism, xenophobia, and racism[19] and he actively opposed efforts to permit survivors of the Holocaust to come to the United States.[20][21]

Rosenberg trial

[edit]
See also: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

Many people both inside and outside of the Jewish community have alleged that the Rosenberg trial was motivated by or tinged by antisemitism, including internalized antisemitism among American Jews. Many Jewish organizations in the United States were worried that they would be smeared by allegations of Judeo-Bolshevism and were supportive of the execution of the Rosenbergs. Jewish Communists, including the publication Jewish Life as well as the Rosenbergs themselves, compared American Jews who supported the execution to the Judenrat, Jews who collaborated with Nazis during the Holocaust. One non-Jewish member of the Rosenberg's jury later stated their view that because the judge, defendants, defense, and prosecution during the trial were mostly Jewish that they felt good that this was strictly a Jewish show. It was Jew against Jew. It wasn't the Christians hanging the Jews. They added their view that Any other judge would have been more lenient than Kaufman.[22] During her trial, Ethel Rosenberg alleged that This is the way the Judenrat performed for the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto following a Court of Appeals ruling written by Jerome Frank.[23]

The ADL rejected accusations that the Rosenberg trial was influenced by antisemitism. Judge Irving Kaufman, who ordered the execution of the Rosenbergs, was a member of the ADL's Civil Rights committee.[24] In 1952, Lucy Dawidowicz wrote in Commentary that Jewish communists viewed the ADL and other mainstream Jewish organizations as reactionary, fascist-collaborating oligarchs and conspiratorial enemies both of democracy and their own oppressed people.[25] In 1952, the ADL and other Jewish organizations released a joint statement rejecting the claims of the National Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case that the trial was motivated by antisemitism. The statement characterized the Rosenberg Committee as trying to inject the false issue of anti-Semitism.[26] A 1952 ADL document claimed that The Communists, in their worldwide propaganda attack defending the convicted atom spies, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, provide a vivid example of the technique of falsely charging anti-Semitism to hide conspiracy.[27]

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "Jewish Radicalism and the Red Scare: Introductory Essay". Jewish Women's Archive. Retrieved May 4, 2025.
  2. ^ "McCarthyism and Antisemitism: The Execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg". The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives. Retrieved May 4, 2025.
  3. ^ a b "Jewish Groups Assail Mccarthy for False "anti-semitic" Issue". Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Retrieved May 4, 2025.
  4. ^ Arthur Herman (2000). Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator. Simon and Schuster. pp. 160–161. ISBN 978-0684836256.
  5. ^ a b Hendricks, Nancy (2019). "Anti-Defamation League". In Ainsworth, Scott H.; Harward, Brian M. (eds.). Political Groups, Parties, and Organizations That Shaped America: An Encyclopedia and Document Collection. Vol. 1. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 9781440851964.
  6. ^ "The Jewish Features Of The Infamous Rosenberg Case". The Jewish Press. Retrieved May 4, 2025.
  7. ^ "Ethel Rosenberg: A Personal Perspective". Tikkun.org. Retrieved May 4, 2025.
  8. ^ "The executed innocent: Why justice for Ethel Rosenberg still matters". New Statesman. Retrieved May 4, 2025.
  9. ^ "The Red Scare Scarred the Left — But Couldn't Kill It". Jacobin.com. Retrieved May 4, 2025.
  10. ^ "The Death and Life of the Jewish Century". Boston Review. Retrieved May 4, 2025.
  11. ^ Herman, Arthur (2000). Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator. Free Press. pp. 54–55. ISBN 0-684-83625-4.
  12. ^ Herman, Arthur (1999). Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator. Free Press. p. 51. ISBN 0-684-83625-4.
  13. ^ Magazine, Smithsonian; Cushman, Larry Tye,Chloe. "When Senator Joe McCarthy Defended Nazis". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved May 4, 2025.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  14. ^ Richard Halworth Rovere: Senator Joe McCarthy. University of California Press, Berkeley 1996, ISBN 0-520-20472-7, S. 112. (Reprint der Originalausgabe erschienen bei Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, New York 1959.)
  15. ^ "Hunting communists? They were really after Jews". The Jewish Chronicle. Retrieved May 4, 2025.
  16. ^ "The News of the Week in Review". New York Times. June 4, 1939. Retrieved May 4, 2025.
  17. ^ What to Know About the 1952 Law Invoked by President Trump's Immigration Order
  18. ^ Marinari, Maddalena. "Divided and Conquered: Immigration Reform Advocates and the Passage of the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act." Journal of American Ethnic History, vol. 35, no. 3, Spring 2016, pp. 9–40.
  19. ^ Davis, Hillary (February 16, 2021). "Many state leaders voice support for renaming Las Vegas airport". Las Vegas Sun. Retrieved May 7, 2025.
  20. ^ Cite error: The named reference :1 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  21. ^ Johnson, Robert David (2006). Congress and the Cold War. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. p. 36. ISBN 978-1-1394-4744-7 – via Google Books.
  22. ^ "Jewish judge punished communist spies for being the wrong sort of American Jews: new book". The Jewish Independent. Retrieved May 4, 2025.
  23. ^ ""Anti-Semitism" and the Rosenberg Case:The Latest Communist Propaganda Trap". Commentary (magazine). Retrieved May 4, 2025.
  24. ^ "The Anti-Democratic Origins of the ADL and AJC". Jewish Currents. Retrieved March 31, 2025.
  25. ^ ""Anti-Semitism" and the Rosenberg Case:The Latest Communist Propaganda Trap". Commentary. Retrieved May 4, 2025.
  26. ^ Gilbert, Lauren. "'A Very Ticklish Problem': The AJC Response to the Rosenberg Trial & Execution". Center for Jewish History. Retrieved May 4, 2025.
  27. ^ "The Protocols of the Purge Trial" (PDF). Wayback Machine. Archived from the original (PDF) on April 3, 2021. Retrieved May 4, 2025.
[edit]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=McCarthyism_and_antisemitism&oldid=1289555188"